It’s a once-a-year Saturday event. It’s free. And it’s a great celebration of books—that is to say, of personal expression. Because a book, after all, is a one-to-one relationship. Someone wrote it and someone else is reading it, entering a new world to which he or she might respond with excitement, awe, and perhaps devotion. Both the writer and the reader hope for this all-consuming and electrifying connection.
You don’t need a convention to support this process, but
book people like to get together to share their enthusiasms and look around for
new ones. Others make use of this “platform” to spread the news about their own
literary works. If you were in the mood, you could write a book yourself,
upload it to KDP or some such print-on-demand site, and rent a table at the
festival for a reasonable sum. A few passing visitors might be interested.
Someone might even go so far as to take a chance and buy a copy. Oh, happy day!
Other tables at the event had been rented by vaunted local
publishers such as Gray Wolf, Coffee House, and Milkweed, and by university
writing programs, neurodiverse publications, neighborhood coffee shops, and utopian
political rags fomenting Marxist or eco-revolutionary transformations. What
wonderful things are going on in our fair city!
Meanwhile, a stable of young writers from every part of the
country had been enticed by the organizers at Rain Taxi to appear at hourly readings
and panel discussions. At Saturday’s event the U.S. Poet Laureate, Arthur Sze,
was scheduled to appear, though most of the authors involved were unknown to me.
For myself, I don’t really need any new books. Having
served as a factotum of the book trade for half a century, I went to the fair not
so much to look at books as to see who might show up among the authors,
printers, and warehouse workers I used to work with, and sometimes still do.
I arrived a little earlier than usual because Norton, a publisher I often work with, was going to be late and he asked me to open the Nodin Press table. Sure. That made parking a lot easier, and by coincidence, as I was walking down the sunny streets of St. Paul toward the depot I came upon Stu Abraham, a well-known and friendly local sales rep, now retired.
As we made our way to the event, we “caught up,” which took
some doing, because Stu hardly knew me to begin with. When we got to the hall
he bought me a coffee and we discussed the numerous features of the
neighborhood we both frequent west of Lake Harriet and the bird life in
southern Arizona, where he and his wife spend the winter.
The first person to arrive at the booth was a kindly woman looking for Joyce Sutphen’s recent poetry collection, Paper Camera. “She’s a good friend of mine,” the woman said. I pointed out where the book was stacked, and she pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. But the price of the book, with discount, was only $14, and I had not yet located the cigar box with the money in it.
“Well, I’ll be happy to have it even at twenty dollars,” she
said. “Are you John? I’m Liz Weir.”
“Oh, hi!” I said. “Yeah, I’m John. I’m looking forward to
working with you on the new book.”
“So am I,” she said cordially as she headed off into the
gathering crowd.
My next visitor was Rachel Hoestler, a book designer for Bookmobile who generously provided me with technical tips back when I was just learning the ropes in that field. I also have vague recollections of chewing the fat with her at the annual Bang convention north of Brainerd.
“Gee, your kids must be out of college by now,” I said.
“My son’s through; my daughter is just finishing up,” she
said. “Psychology. She wants to go into some kind of social work.”
One man, a retired psychoanalyst with white-rimmed glasses, thought he’d start reading poetry and asked for recommendations. Hmmm.
By the time Norton arrived the aisles were filling up with people of all ages. During my spin around the floor I stopped at the Bookmobile booth briefly so Nicole Baxter could show me some pictures of the new printing press they’d installed.
“Often you see the brilliance, the light, but the camera
doesn’t quite capture it,” I said. “These oranges and blue-greens are great. I
suppose you use Photoshop.”
“Of course,” he said. “You’re going for the look, but even
more for the feel.”
Rounding the corner, I met up with two local maestros of
book promotion—long-time Strib reviewer Laurie Hertzel and Rain Taxi
founder Eric Lorberer.
“John!’ Eric almost exclaimed, rising from his chair. We shook hands. I hadn’t seen Eric for ages, but I used to drop by his house to pick up books to review.
Looking back the list, I hardly remember most of the books.
In retrospect, they look a little “hard-core.”
“What is Ancient Philosophy?” “French Gastronomy,” “Chasing
the Dragon: a Firsthand Account of the Chinese Revolution,” “Heidegger’s
Confusions,” “Duende, a Journey into the Heart of Flamenco,” “Mexico: The
Revolution and Beyond,” “The Road to Santiago,” “Dictionary of Untranslatables:
a philosophical lexicon,” “Knut Hamsun in America,” “World Graphic Design,”
“Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed,” “The Mays of
Ventadorn,” “The Collected Poems of Sextus Propertius,” “The Story of a New
Name,” “At the Existentialist Café,” “The Philosophy of Walking,” “The
Shipwrecked Mind,” “The Hidden Life of Trees,” “Lost Profiles: Memories of
Cubism, Dada, and Surrealism,” “The Moravian Night,” “At the Stranger’s Gate,”
“The Novel of Ferrara,” Night School: a Reader for Grownups,” “Lydia Davis
Essays: One,” “Instants of Elation: Recent Philosophy for the Masses,” “The
Fruit Thief.”
Back at the booth, venerable poets Thomas R. Smith and Bart Sutter were deep in conversation. Liz Weir swung around again briefly and I had the presence of mind to give her the change for her purchase. Stu Abraham reappeared with two other retired reps to chat with Norton. I’m pretty sure I know what they were thinking as we shook hands.
“Who is this guy? I’ve seen him somewhere before.”
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